September has arrived with one foot in tomato season and the other planted squarely in pumpkin spice. This week, Bobby Flay is working the line, Carla Lalli Music is eating her feelings, and Giada De Laurentiis is in the ballroom. We also have radicchio pesto, chicken meatballs, Pringles built for dipping, and a new documentary remembering one of New York’s most storied restaurants.

Restaurant competitions usually bear little resemblance to an actual night at work, but Bobby Flay’s The Line, now streaming on HBO Max, puts dinner service at the center of the action. Flay leads Antonia Lofaso, Michael Jenkins, and Claudette Zepeda against the staff of an established restaurant, with real diners rating each plate. The premiere brought in Fariyal Abdullahi and her crew from New York City’s Hav & Mar for a global seafood battle, with Marcus Samuelsson joining their line. Visiting teams can win $25,000, but first they have to get everyone fed.

→ Giada De Laurentiis is trading the kitchen for the ballroom on the new season of Dancing with the Stars. She says she turned the show down 10 times before her daughter Jade finally convinced her to go for it, proving that daughters remain undefeated. De Laurentiis and her partner Alan Bersten survived their first week. 

→ Hailey Bieber’s chicken meatballs have become the internet’s latest group project. After Bieber shared the method on Instagram Stories without a single measurement, food writers and home cooks began filling in the blanks: ground chicken, ricotta, egg, breadcrumbs, and seasonings, browned and simmered in tomato sauce, then topped with Parmesan and cottage cheese. Apparently, no measurements is not a deterrent. It is a challenge.

→ Top of the World tells the story of Windows on the World, the celebrated restaurant that once sat 107 stories above Manhattan. Former staffers remember the food, hospitality, and singular experience of dining at the top of the World Trade Center. The documentary short is now streaming on the CNN app.

At last, an answer to the question nobody asked: What if we make The Social Network but with wings? Hooters’ original founders are producing Hooters: The Movie, which follows two friends from Iowa whose Florida road trip somehow ends with them creating the chain. Casting is underway, filming begins in November, and the project is being described, with an admirably straight face, as both a buddy comedy and an inspirational biopic.

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→ Carla Lalli Music wrote Food Is a Feeling after her divorce, when what she wanted to eat was inseparable from how she was feeling. Across 65 recipes and 30 essays, Saturday Night Alfredo, Alone Popcorn, and other highly specific comforts give every possible mood its own menu.

→ The nightly question of what everyone is actually willing to eat sits at the center of Everything Delish. Jamie Milne’s collection moves easily between weeknight dinners and food for a crowd, with more than 100 approachable recipes that favor crispy edges, generous toppings, and very little restraint.

→ An entire cookbook devoted to bitter Italian chicory might sound like advanced vegetable studies, but Radicchio by Lane Selman and Margarett Waterbury knows how to make the assignment appealing. Their potato gnocchi with radicchio pesto softens the leaves with pine nuts, almonds, garlic, olive oil, and cheese, turning a supporting salad player into the whole point of dinner.

Pringles is introducing its thickest crisp yet, a sturdier, ridged version designed specifically for dipping. Arriving in Original, French Onion, and Bacon Cheddar, Pringles Dippers are intended to survive everything from salsa to the heavier end of the spinach-artichoke category. After nearly 60 years, the famously delicate chip is finally ready to carry its weight.

The Terminal! Loosely inspired by Iranian refugee Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived in Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport for nearly 18 years, Steven Spielberg’s 2004 comedy strands Tom Hanks’ Viktor Navorski at JFK, where returning luggage carts earn him enough quarters for Burger King. The Double Whopper combo and side salad appear to cost about $7, making the movie’s least believable detail its airport food prices.